


what the waves wash away

by INKQueen



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Injury warning, again nothing too far from canon typical, for those who are sensitive to that, i'm imagining that this is shortly after damian comes into their lives, it's not graphic, its about his relationship with bruce, vomit warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:37:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INKQueen/pseuds/INKQueen
Summary: Dick washes up on a beach after a mission with Bruce goes wrong. Stressful situations lead to interesting conversations with his injured mentor.





	what the waves wash away

Dick breathed sand. His lungs seized and he coughed, pushing himself up onto his forearms. He gently blinked his eyes open; they were crusted with sand and he resisted the urge to rub them, knowing that it would only get grit in his eyes. He was obviously on a beach; the first sound his brain could process was the roar of the waves. His lips were coated in sand as well, his mouth dry. He tried swallowing and tasted salt. His stomach revolted. Dick turned around, hands splashing down in the surf, and vomited sea water.

What’d happened? Dick’s brain was fuzzy; he and Bruce --  _ Bruce. _ If Dick had washed up here, there was no reason to think Bruce hadn’t washed up here as well. 

Dick staggered to his feet, sand showering off his suit. God, the sand was everywhere. Dick surveyed his surroundings; a long, overcast beach stretched ahead and behind him, bordered by short cliffs that turned into dunes about a half mile behind him. With no helpful clues as to where to start, Dick staggered forward down the beach.

“Bruce!” Dick called, his voice rasping harshly. His domino mask had been lost in the sea, and the wind whipped his sand-caked hair into his eyes. Dick trudged on, the clouds over the sun preventing from knowing how long he’d been going. The cliffs rose higher, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

Eventually, Dick spotted something dark on the edge of the surf, and his heart rate picked up. He dashed the last few meters, but as he got closer, the object came into focus. It was just a log. Dick’s heart sank, then leaped back into his throat, when he saw a piece of black fabric draped over the log. He scrambled around to the other side of the driftwood, falling to his knees and causing a spray of wet sand.

“Bruce. Bruce!”

Sure enough, Bruce Wayne was lying tucked up against the log. Dick shook his shoulder but got no response. The pool of seawater around Bruce was dark, foggy red swirls being pulled in and out by the lapping waves. Dick grabbed Bruce under the arms and hauled him out of the puddle. He wasn’t dead, Dick was sure of that. He’d seen Batman walk away from much worse, but he needed to prevent any more blood loss. Kneeling beside him, Dick quickly scanned Bruce’s body for injuries with his eyes and fingers. His light touch soon found metal sticking out of Bruce’s side. Blinking to focus his eyes, Dick leaned in to examine it. It was an enormous piece of shrapnel buried just above Bruce’s hip. Dick leaned back on his heels, biting the inside of his cheek as he tried to think. There was no way this island was uninhabited, but there was no way of knowing how far away the nearest civilization was. Better stay put and hope that the tracker in his waterlogged suit wasn’t broken and that help was on the way.

The tide was coming in and the wind was picking up. Dick scanned the cliffs for potential shelter. The was a large crevasse a little way along. Dick stood up, fighting his instincts not to leave his wounded mentor alone, and half jogged, half scrambled up to it. A cool, damp wind gusted out of the crevasse as Dick came up to it, and looking in, he saw that it opened into a larger cave. For now, that would be good enough. Dick returned to Bruce and hauled the older man upright onto his shoulder, being mindful of his injured side. He pulled them both into the cave. The tide was coming in, and would likely come into the cave, so he checked the cave for a water line. At the back was a rocky shelf above the water mark, a hole in the sand cliff above allowing a small patch of weak gray light to illuminate it. Better than good enough, it was almost lucky.

After hauling the unconscious Bruce up onto the shelf, Dick flopped back against the wall, panting. The man wasn’t light. Dick needed to build a fire before the light was gone. He left the cave and gathered as much driftwood as he could from the top of the beach. It was barely dry enough to start, but eventually, Dick had a fire.

He moved Bruce up next to the light of the flame, removed his gloves and began patching him up. His med kit hadn’t been lost in the ocean, thankfully. Dick left the shrapnel in Bruce’s side; he’d rather risk infection than having Bruce bleed out right here if anything vital had been damaged. As he bandaged Bruce up, binding the shrapnel tightly in place, he could feel the thoughts in the back of his mind beginning to swirl unhappily. He ignored them. Dick removed Bruce’s cowl to patch up a gash on his forehead. It was odd, dealing with an unconscious Bruce, no scowling, no grunting. It wasn’t as though Dick had never seen the man injured before, but like this, it was as if Bruce was nothing more than a body… almost like he was dead.

Dick place a hand on his mentor’s chest, feeling Bruce breathing through the stretching and contracting of the material of his suit. Dick closed his eyes, and he could almost imagine he felt Bruce’s heartbeat, strong as ever.

Once he’d tended to all of the injuries as well as he could with so little equipment, Dick sighed and got up, finally letting his mind drop out of survival mode. He went to the mouth of the cave, where the rain was coming down in buckets. He slung off the top part of his suit and stepped out into the rain, letting it wash the sand from his hair and body. Glancing down at himself, he saw that he was barely injured, which surprised him. Some part of his brain registered that he probably should have checked that before now, but, well, he’d been busy. Dick did his best to rinse out his suit -- God, the sand was really everywhere -- and pulled it back on. As he turned back to go back inside, lightning forked directly overhead and thunder cracked over the roar of the wind and rain.

The feeling was vivid enough to bring the memory of their mission crashing into the forefront of Dick’s mind. The boat had exploded just after he and Bruce had leapt clear of it. The white light of the explosion was burned into Dick’s memory along with the feeling of Bruce’s arms around him, covering Dick with his own body, shielding him, then the cold water.

With the memory came anger. No wonder he wasn’t injured.

“Damn it Bruce,” Dick muttered to himself, reentering the cave. Maybe if he were physically bigger, like Jason, Bruce wouldn’t feel like he could act as Dick’s body armor all the time. He was a grown man, for Pete's sake. And he’d been in the vigilante business long enough. Bruce knew how upset Dick got when other people got hurt on his account.

Dick sat down heavily next to the fire and tousled out his soaking hair, sighing. If he was honest with himself, he knew that Bruce’s need to protect him had nothing to do with his size. 

Dick tossed the rest of the wood onto the fire. He wasn’t running on adrenaline anymore and his body ached. He leaned back against the cool wall, and closed his eyes, just for a minute…

“Dick!”

Someone was shaking him. Violently. That would be… Bruce. It was Bruce, who was injured. And shaking him awake. Which meant that Bruce was awake. Of course.

Dick swatted Bruce’s hands off his shoulders, blinking his eyes open. The fire was nearly embers, illuminating Bruce as a flickering silhouette crouching over him. Bruce’s hands moved upwards and began gingerly feeling around in Dick’s hair at the side of his head. 

Dick tilted his head away with a muttered “What?” He tried swatting Bruce’s hands away again, but the man persisted.

“You’ve got a lump on your head, and I’m checking for a head injury,” Bruce growled. God, could the man not speak normally? “You were unconscious, which isn’t a good sign. I need to check you for a concussion.”

“No -- Bruce -- STOP!” Dick shoved Bruce off and scrambled to his feet. “Just stop worrying about me for one second!”

Bruce turned and the dying fire lit his face. It was waxen and taut. Bruce was clearly in pain and clearly ignoring it.

“I was asleep, not unconscious. For God's Sake, Bruce, you have a six-inch piece of metal sticking out of your side and you’re worried that  _ I _ might have a minor concussion? I’m clearly functional! Who do you got us into this cave and bandaged you up and started a fire? Or were your amazing detective skills not enough to deduce that I’m fine and you’re not!?”

Bruce sat back against the wall, silent. Dick walked towards the edge of the rock shelf, intending to leave the cave for a second to cool his head, but stopped at the sound of lapping waves. The tide had come in and waves slapped the stone halfway up the shelf. Instead, Dick paced back around to the other side of the fire and crouched beside Bruce.

“I’m checking the bandages,” he muttered. The bandages were fine. Bruce stayed silent. “We should both try to get some rest as long as we’re stuck here.”

Dick got back up and went around to his side of the fire again, settling in against the wall with his arms crossed. Bruce was still gazing at him, passive and impassive. Dick decided he didn’t care; he didn’t want to have this conversation anyway. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

“Dick.”

The soft word woke him. He might’ve been asleep for a few minutes or a few hours, he wasn’t sure. The glow of the coals lit Bruce’s face, casting deep shadows on it and making Bruce look more tired and ghostly than usual. 

“What?”

“I’m not sorry.”

Dick blew out a puff of air, exasperated. “I’m not surprised.”

“I’ll never not worry about you, Dick,” Bruce persisted. “I’ll never stop trying to protect you.”

“Fine. Just quit throwing your body in harm's way to do it.”

Bruce shook his head. “I can’t promise that. You… I’ve always said you’re a better man than I’ll ever be --”

“That’s not true,” some childish part of Dick piped up.

“-- and that’s a legacy I want to protect.”

“You’ve got a son now, Bruce, if you want to talk about legacy--”

“He’s not my only son, or even my first,” Bruce growled.

Dick felt a warmth light up in his chest, and he struggled against it in vain frustration. He was still trying to be angry, but Bruce showing a rare level of affection tended to have this effect on him. The feeling was also mixed with a small amount of shame; as rare as it was for Dick to see Bruce’s direct affection, his other children probably never saw it. Dick had to turn over to hide the fact that he was happy, and also annoyed at his own happiness. Probably, this was all just the pain talking.

“Better get some rest ‘til Tim comes to get us,” he mumbled, closing his eyes again and letting the sound of waves sweep him back to sleep.


End file.
